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By Tom Lanham photo by Travis Shinn
20 illinoisentertainer . com october 2022
Revitalize The Soil
t ’ s never a good battle strategy to telegraph your punches , swears Lamb of God growler L . Randall Blythe . Several years ago , he foresaw a possible post-EMP , Road Warrior atavistic future when banks have all failed and suggested , matter-of-factly , that when the grid went down , it would just be “ me and my guns .” Did the Virginian have a hidden armory , a cache of survivalist weapons just waiting to be tapped in the wake of societal chaos ? He laughed with a maybe , maybe not innocence at the time but never really clarified . And in March of 2020 , when it really did seem like the world was going to hell in a coronavirus hand basket , the Cody Lundin-trained doomsday prepper alluded to having a few “ bug-out bags ” packed full of the necessary gear and swore he had just purchased land in an unspecified South American country where he was planning to disappear if social structures really did collapse around us . The bottom hadn ’ t fallen out yet , but the pandemic was still in its infancy , and who knew what would happen when the still-employed Haves met the disenfranchised Have-nots on the street once all the lockdowns were lifted ? Still , he nervously noted then , cracks in the carefully-ordered infrastructure were beginning to show . And this year , as Lamb of God ( with drummer Art Cruz , bassist John Campbell , and twin jet-turbine-velocity guitarists Mark Morton and Willie Adler ) releases Omens , its more measured , insidious juggernaut of a follow-up to 2020 ’ s explosive eponymous effort , the rocker is still maintaining that stoic poker face and not showing all of his cards .
Maybe it ’ s because Blythe has had plenty of time to reflect . But Omens , despite its hammering squeal-chorded assault , feels far more grounded , clear-sighted , to an almost comforting degree . And this time , the lyricist has found solace in the Biblical (“ Gomorrah ” and the title track ), our shared mortality (“ Ditch ,” “ September Song ,”) and even the morbid musings of one of Richmond ’ s favorite literary sons , Edgar Allan Poe (“ Nevermore ,” “ Vanishing ,” and To the Grave ,” which cautions that “ The only thing to fear / Remains inside unseen ”). Calmly , wisely , Blythe , 51 , has been reading and watching the increasingly offputting news and quietly considering his response , the sanest path forward through a terrain that ’ s truly gotten batshit crazy . To start with , he says , he ’ s identified and isolated two key 2022 villains : “ Self-interest and fear , and that ’ s not the way I want to live my life , chasing after some sort of banal material legacy that I won ’ t ever be able to enjoy . But there ’ s a sense of fear , I think , that has pervaded our society , and people want something that makes ‘ em feel better .” As in the ill-fated , pleasureseeking metropolis of cesspool in “ Gomorrah ,” he adds , “ which definitely paints a picture of societal collapse , and perhaps personal collapse .”
The rocker has combed through philosophy books over the pandemic — many of them dating back to ancient Rome — looking for modern solutions to mankind ’ s seemingly imminent extinction . And he partially blames our own addiction to the convenience of technology . “ We ’ ve become pretty myopic , in the sense that we only view right now the latest , greatest , most current thing that ’ s happening as the only reality that ’ s ever existed ,” he grumbles . “ So that ’ s why people ’ s attention spans and ability for critical thought has diminished so much because they ’ re fed this digital blitzkrieg of bright , shiny things , brought to — thank you very much — by MegaCorp Advertising .” The oft-repeated newsfeed word that made him cringe during the lockdown , he says , was ‘ unprecedented ’ because we ’ ve experienced all of this before , even violent toiletpaper hoarding . So pay attention — we have been here before . And this word gets thrown a lot , but this is how fascism happens .” But Blythe showed a few more of his cards , like the location of his tropical retreat — Ecuador — and his initially secret mission for going there — an ambitious reforestation program he and a friend have undertaken to help reclaim crucial parts of the jungle .
IE : Even though we were both shivering like Chihuahuas Day One for our last interview back in March of 2020 , I still had high hopes for humanity to take the time to do a total or at least partial reset . But you know , we seem to have learned nothing . L . RANDALL BLYTHE : Ha ! Right . Yes . And this is something that I ’ m currently struggling with , very hard , as I ’ m writing a new book . I ’ m working on a new non-fiction book — I wanted to write fiction , but my agent said , “ You need another non-fiction book .” And he was pushing me toward what they call , I guess , an ‘ inspirational memoir ’ or whatever . So I ’ m writing this book , and it ’ s about different perspectives from other people that I ’ ve tried to incorporate into my own life and take something from . Something positive from — things I have learned from people other than me . And it ’ s been very difficult to maintain any sort of positivity for a while now . It really has . Things have just gotten screwier and screwier and screwier . And I ’ m thinking like , “ What is the cause of this ? Why are people acting the way they do ?” And I think that there ’ s a cult of toxic , narcissistic individualism that has made people think , for some insane reason , that their uneducated opinions are just as valid as those of world-renowned experts . On a bunch of different topics , everything from medicine to foreign policy to economics . I mean , I am in full possession of the fact that I am a man of average intelligence . But I ’ m smart enough and emotionally stable enough to realize that if I don ’ t know something , I need to refer to someone smarter than myself . But I think in today ’ s societal climate , people just don ’ t want to accept that . And they don ’ t continues on page 22